Growth, debt, and sovereign risk in a small, open economy

The continuing debt crisis that many developing countries have faced in the current decade has underscored the need to understand the relationships between debt accumulation and growth, as well as the need to develop policy approaches that foster adjustment in the external account while maintaining the growth of output. The purpose of this paper is to develop a macroeconomic model for a small open developing economy that borrows abroad. This model will assist in studying the dynamic interaction between debt and growth, as well as the impact of various policies and exogenous shocks on the rate of capital accumulation, the current account and debt. From this analysis, the authors make the following conclusions. An upward shift in the supply of debt leads to a long run decline in external debt, a higher domestic interest rate, less capital stock, and a reduced trade surplus. An increase in the marginal cost of debt may or may not lower long run external debt as well. An increase in productivity raises the long run stock of capital but leaves the level of external debt and the interest rate unchanged in the long run. Finally, fiscal expansion has almost no effect in either the short run or the long run.Economic Theory&Research,Environmental Economics&Policies,Strategic Debt Management,Banks&Banking Reform,Financial Intermediation

A Six-Sigma DMAIC Approach to Improve the Sales Process of a Technology Start-Up

Despite the adoption of Six-Sigma in different service sectors, its application in the Sales function of a Technology-based Start-up has not been explored. This paper deploys an action research-based study methodology and conducts a thorough analysis of a Technology Start-up company in Indonesia, using Six-Sigma principles and the Define-Measure-Analyse-Improve-Control (DMAIC) approach. Statistical validation of the causes of problems helped to formulate a strategy that may have otherwise not been possible. The results of the study and proposed solutions confirm the potential benefits of adopting Six-Sigma in the Sales function of technology start-ups to reduce, particularly, customer waiting time. The novelty of this research lies in the fact that it applies Six-Sigma in a transactional process such as sales, which earlier studies have not explored in depth. This paper can be employed as a reference for organisations to undertake and guide specific process improvement projects similar to the one presented

Essential Qualifications: Accounting Faculty Selection Trends

Colleges and universities are challenged with attracting faculty with the essential qualifications to deliver accounting degree programs that meet the accounting profession’s needs. Budget constraints and accreditation standards further influence colleges and universities hiring trends, particularly in the specialized areas of tax and audit. Before the pandemic, business schools began adjusting their hiring practices to address these challenges. Furthermore, institutions were redesigning degree programs to be consistent with the implemented changes in professional certification exams. The disruptive effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on enrollment and operational budgets have exacerbated these challenges. Consequently, institutions may need to alter their recruitment strategies to contend with faculty shortages and provide a curriculum to meet the profession’s needs. This study explored what qualifications decision-makers deemed essential for recently hired accounting faculty. Further, we investigated to what extent particular academic institutional characteristics influenced the selection of an accounting faculty candidate. Finally, this study also reports on the trend in the essential qualifications preferred for new accounting faculty hires

Innovation and growth in family-owned Mexican SMEs

This paper studies the relationship between innovation and the level of growth in family-owned small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), this is done within the context of Mexico. The conceptual framework of analysis is based on the hypothesis that innovation in products, processes and management systems contribute to the achievement of growth in family-owned SMEs. To test this hypothesis, a model of structural equation of second order was developed with data collected from 206 family-owned SMEs located in the state of Aguascalientes, Mexico. The empirical evidence provided by the analysis supports the hypothesis, showing that family-owned SMEs that increase their innovation activities will also significantly increase their opportunities for growth. This finding can be used to inform the business growth strategies formulated by the owners, or managers, of family-owned SEMs. These also indicate policy-makers that by designing effective policies and providing incentives to support innovation in family-owned SMEs, the government would not only contribute to the growth of these organisations but also to the growth of their regions and countries. Despite the importance of innovation and family-owned SMEs, evidence suggests that studies focused on investigating innovation in this type of organisations are very limited. This paper fills this gap by providing a refined understanding of the relationship between innovation and growth in family-owned SMEs

Slowing the fast fashion industry: an all-round perspective

The fashion sector contributes significantly to global environmental pollution. Clothing manufacturing and transportation produce a large amount of greenhouse gas emissions. Recent research has shown that nowadays, the number of consumers that are more willing to pay higher prices for clothes with high sustainability content is growing. This paper provides a broad framework of current trends in the fashion, textile, and garment industry, highlighting circular and slow fashion values that companies and policymakers should address in the coming years to maintain their competitiveness in the market and promote sustainable development. The EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles is expected to help fashion enterprises achieve more circular, sustainable, and resilient value chains. Notably, encouraging natural and recycled textiles, design for reuse and recycling, second-hand retail and repair, and product-as-a-service models, particularly for items with high turnover rates, have been highlighted as critical factors for reducing the fashion industry's environmental implications

Energy-aware Theft Detection based on IoT Energy Consumption Data

With the advent of modern smart grid networks, advanced metering infrastructure provides real-time information from smart meters (SM) and sensors to energy companies and consumers. The smart grid is indeed a paradigm that is enabled by the Internet of Things (IoT) and in which the SM acts as an IoT device that collects and transmits data over the Internet to enable intelligent applications. However, IoT data communicated over the smart grid could however be maliciously altered, resulting in energy theft due to unbilled energy consumption. Machine learning (ML) techniques for energy theft detection (ETD) based on IoT data are promising but are nonetheless constrained by the poor quality of data and particularly its imbalanced nature (which emerges from the dominant representation of honest users and poor representation of the rare theft cases). Leading ML-based ETD methods employ synthetic data generation to balance the training the dataset. However, these are trained to maximise average correct detection instead of ETD. In this work, we formulate an energy-aware evaluation framework that guides the model training to maximise ETD and minimise the revenue loss due to mis-classification. We propose a convolution neural network with positive bias (CNN-B) and another with focal loss CNN (CNN-FL) to mitigate the data imbalance impact. These outperform the state of the art and the CNN-B achieves the highest ETD and the minimum revenue loss with a loss reduction of 30.4% compared to the highest loss incurred by these methods

Maternal obesity during pregnancy and premature mortality from cardiovascular event in adult offspring : follow-up of 1 323 275 person years

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